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Melick Dissertation Full Draft 3 Melick, Elizabeth, Ph.D., May 2018 English Four Middle English Roland Romances: An Edition of Poems Drawn from Medieval Manuscripts (323 pp.) Dissertation Director: Susanna Fein This dissertation is an edition of four Middle English romances from the Otuel cycle: Roland and Vernagu, Otuel a Knight, Otuel and Roland, and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain. The previous editions of these four romances are difficult to obtain and outdated, so there is a need for an updated, easily accessible edition of these poems. The poems were transcribed from their medieval manuscripts and edited for a modern audience that includes undergraduate students. With this audience in mind, aspects of the texts such as punctuation and word division were modernized and marginal glosses of difficult Middle English words were added. I have also included explanatory notes for names, places, and phrases that will most likely be unfamiliar to modern readers, acknowledging that these contextual details are crucial to a reader's grasp of each romance's narrative. In addition to modernizing and annotating the four romances, I have discussed the most significant issues relating to these poems' editorial history and subject matter. A portion of my introduction discusses the manuscripts and previous editions. The introduction also addresses the historical events on which the romances are based: the eigth-century Frankish emperor Charlemagne's failed attempt to conquer Saragossa in Spain, and the ambush of his rearguard on his journey home. I also discuss the Saracens (a medieval term for Muslims) who are present in the romances, surveying the notable scholarship on romance Saracens and providing my own interpretation of the significance of the Saracen characters in the Otuel-cycle romances. Four Middle English Roland Romances: An Edition of Poems Drawn from Medieval Manuscripts A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Elizabeth Melick May 2018 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials Dissertation written by Elizabeth Melick B.A., Capital University, 2011 M.A., Kent State University, 2013 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2018 Approved by _______________________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Susanna Fein _______________________________, Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Wesley Raabe _______________________________ David Raybin _______________________________ Jennifer Larson _______________________________ Judy Wakabayashi Accepted by _______________________________, Chair, Department of English Robert Trogdon _______________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences James L. Blank TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................iv CHAPTERS I. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................1 II. ROLAND AND VERNAGU........................................................................................80 Textual Notes.......................................................................................................102 Explanatory Notes................................................................................................106 III. OTUEL A KNIGHT..................................................................................................114 Textual Notes ......................................................................................................153 Explanatory Notes................................................................................................161 IV. OTUEL AND ROLAND...........................................................................................165 Textual Notes.......................................................................................................232 Explanatory Notes ...............................................................................................243 V. DUKE ROLAND AND SIR OTUEL OF SPAIN......................................................248 Textual Notes.......................................................................................................287 Explanatory Notes................................................................................................292 GLOSSARY................................................................................................................................296 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................309 iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Susanna Fein, for her meticulous and thoughtful feedback and always encouraging me to pursue goals and projects that I would have considered impossible. Without Susanna's guidance, I would not be the scholar I am today, nor would I have achieved any of my previous successes. I am also grateful to my committee members, David Raybin, Wesley Raabe, Jennifer Larson, and Judy Wakabayashi for their feedback on my project, and for persevering through difficult language in order to help me find the areas of my project that needed the most attention. I would like to thank both Wesley Raabe and Christopher Roman for the courses they taught that introduced me to the process and methods of editing and helped me realize my potential in this area of work. I am also indebted to Kent State's Graduate Student Senate, for awarding me a funds that allowed me to travel to London to consult manuscripts at the British Library. I am deeply appreciative of the support of my fellow graduate students at Kent State, who provided commiseration and encouragement when needed. My close friends, Grace, J.D., and Kim, for lifting my spirits when I was overwhelmed by my work and telling me to be proud of my accomplishments. My parents and siblings have not only cheered me on with endless enthusiasm, but also taught me to love stories and think for myself. Without them, I likely never would have found this discipline that brings me so much joy, and I cannot thank them enough. Finally, I am immeasurably thankful for my partner, Tyler, and our four fur babies, who have loved and supported me through countless rounds of revisions, ignored the stacks of books accumulating in our home, and helped me enjoy life's simple pleasures, even when stressed. I love you all the whole amount. iv Introduction This project is an edition of four Middle English Charlemagne romances from the Otuel cycle composed during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries: Roland and Vernagu, Otuel a Knight, Otuel and Roland, and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain. The romances each have a single witness and come from three manuscripts: Roland and Vernagu and Otuel a Knight from Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck MS); Otuel and Roland from London, British Library MS Additional 37492 (Fillingham MS); and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain from London, British Library MS Additional 31042 (London Thornton MS).1 These four romances have all been edited for the Early English Text Society (EETS), but the most recent edition of the four is Mary O’Sullivan’s 1935 edition of Otuel and Roland, while the editions of the other poems date to the late nineteenth century. Due to the EETS editions’ age and limited number of reprints, there are few copies in circulation. Furthermore, the editing practices used in the existing editions are outdated. These four romances need to be published in updated and easily accessible editions—a need this project fulfills. I have edited these four romances with a goal of making them accessible for undergraduate students but usable for advanced scholars, using guidelines set forth by TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) for their Middle English Text Series 1 A “witness” is one of the existing copies of a text. Popular works, like Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or The Book of John Mandeville have many witnesses, while works that did not circulate as widely tend to have fewer, or only one. However, it is difficult to judge the 1 (METS). METS editions “maintain the linguistic integrity of the original works but within the parameters of modern reading conventions,” meaning that they do not translate Middle English into modern English, but do modernize the aspects of medieval texts that create the most difficulty for modern readers.2 METS guidelines modernize difficult features of Middle English texts such as lack of punctuation, use of obsolete letters, and the interchangeability of some letters, such i and j or u and v. While accessibility and modernization is one of the central goals of this project, I also aim to produce a clear record of the textual and editorial history of these romances and their historical and critical contexts. As such, this introduction discusses the historical events on which the romances are based, the unique features of each romance, and the predominant critical approaches to the romances’ central topic: conflict between Christians and Saracens.3 I selected these four romances for this project because of both their editorial history and their subject matter. I sought texts that had not been edited in the past fifty years or according to twentieth- and twenty-first-century standards. I was also hoping to find
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